Discontinued use of supplements

That's right. I quit beta alanine and creatine and even fish oil, but I might go back to the fish oil. I don't know yet.

The effects of these actions are meat cravings and a generalized sense of hunger pretty much all the time.  It seems like all I wanna do is shove  protein into my gut. Sometimes I'll be driving around, get a little hungry and weak, and pull into a McDonald's drive thru and get a double quarter pounder no cheese.

Also I'm spending a lot less time on the toilet watching my expensive protein go down the drain. That's pretty much what your body is craving is that creatine you find in red meat, so once that creatine allowance threshold is met the body is going to excrete the excess. Now that I'm off the creatine, my body is processing the meat I'm eating and using that as a creatine source.

This has a super effect. Because  I'm processing the meat for its creatine, I'm also synthesizing the protein from the meat. What I mean by synthesizing is the body breaks down the meat and reassembles the amino acid protein chains into muscle. When protein synthesis goes on, greater muscle growth is achieved.

I feel stronger. I'm making strength gains. My workouts are a lot shorter. The creatine and beta alanine tend to make the body endure longer workouts without tiring out.  Some  would say longer workouts lead to more strength gains. That maybe true. That's up to you to experiment with.

Of course I'm not doing the same workout either. I'm using more machines. The setup time is minimal and way less intensive than loading plates on a bar. Just taking and replacing the weight stack key is all it takes. Of course on many  machines I can do almost the whole stack so I might have to go back to a bar and plates for some movements.

One curious thing is that instead of doing stiff legged deadlifts with a bar and plates, I'm using a heavy duty latex band for stiff legged deadlifts. I place the band flat on the ground. Then step on the band with my bare feet in socks, and I'll leave just enough of a loop on the outside edges of both sides of my feet so that I can grab the loop. Then I'll take a breath of air in through my mouth and try to affix a nice straight position into my lower spine and lock it in. Then with both legs and with knees almost locked and while holding my breath, I'll yank upwards with my lower back while holding the band with both hands I only do single rep sets of these but I do them every workout.

I'm beginning to change my position on repetitive movement injury when it concerns the lower back. It's true that your lower back will get sore if you do stiff legged deadlifts consecutive workouts in a row.  But the lower back is considerably more resilient than any other part of the body.  It can take a little abuse and the next day be fully recovered. You're pretty much using your lower back all the time even when you're sleeping, so it has the potential to accept stressful training and adapt and recover from it pretty quickly. Of course I'm doing spinal stretches in between sets.